Historic Mangrove 9 trial revisited

Published: 8 December, 2016

ECHOES of the first challenge to institutional racism in the Met Police will be heard tomorrow (Friday) evening in a Camden Town church.

The evening will re-live the historic trial of the Mangrove 9 held at the Old Bailey in 1970 after police broke up a demonstration of nearly 200 Afro-Caribbeans in Ladbroke Grove arresting nine men and women. The defendants were either acquitted or found guilty of minor offences. It was the first acknowledgement of racism in the Met.

The street protest was held after anger by the black community fed up with repeated police raids on the Mangrove restaurant.

Among the speakers at the Trinity United Reform church in Buck Street, from 6-9pm, will be veterans of the groundbreaking event – Altheia Jones Lecointe, now 71, a former hospital doctor; Darcus Howe, a campaigner who became a TV documentary maker; Ian Macdonald QC, then a junior barrister; and poet Linton Kwesi Johnson. Proceeds will go to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund.